This invention relates to rubber compounds essentially for use in making conveyor belts, and more particularly, to rubber compounds of which conveyor belts for use in transporting tacky materials such as oil sands are made, and which are capable of preventing adhesion of such tacky materials to the belts.
Oil sands are clay-like materials based on quartz sand and containing a high proportion of a tar-like material or bitumen from which a crude oil is synthetized as by cracking. It has long been a problem in the art that oil sands tend to adhere to conveyor belts by which oil sands are transported to the destination. Oil sands adhere to and build up to a substantial thickness on conventional conveyor belts.
To overcome this adhesion problem, one prior art method employed is by applying kerosine, anti-freeze or aqueous surfactant solution to the surface of conveyor belts before use, thereby preventing oil sands from adhering to and building up on the conveyor belts. This method, however, increases the cost of transportation because of increased installation and material costs. The use of kerosine suffers from the problem of increasing the danger of a fire. There has been a great need for the development of a rubber compound for conveyor belts which is capable of preventing adhesion of oil sands without applying anti-adhesion agents such as kerosine to the belts.